


Porcelain

by zulu



Category: House M.D.
Genre: 07-09, Gen, cuddy fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-24
Updated: 2008-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:06:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zulu/pseuds/zulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Cuddy had been the injured doctor and House had the choice to make?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Porcelain

**Author's Note:**

> Betas by Roga and Leiascully.

This is how your life changes.

You're playing mixed doubles, teaming up with Taylor from Cardiology, whose serve is garbage but who's strong in the forecourt. You're ahead, 40-15, in the final set, and it's match point. You grin at Martin, bouncing the ball once or twice, enjoying its smart _pop_ against the court. Then, you stretch upwards, every muscle moving in concert, and toss it in the air.

A breath. An instant of concentration so intense that you move entirely without thought; your serve blasts across the net for the ace.

And there's a pain in your leg.

The game's over. You shake hands over the net, sweating and sticky and half-laughing at that final, perfect serve. You agree to meet for drinks in a few days' time, eager to get out of the sun.

You wince, reaching for your sports bag; you limp, heading for the clubhouse. "Nothing," you assure Taylor, "it's just a pulled muscle. I can walk it off." He nods and you promise you will rest, elevate, heat, ice. All the suggestions doctors can never keep to themselves, even though you know the routine better than him, since he's a surgeon and you still work part of each day in the clinic. You force yourself to walk normally to the change rooms, to your car afterwards. You wonder, _am I really that old?_ and then dismiss the thought with a sigh.

This is the moment that your life changes.

Amazing, how you don't notice it at all.

 

\--

 

The ache is still there the next morning. You go in to work anyway, only allowing yourself to grimace and massage your thigh once you're behind your office door. Davidson catches you at it during the board meeting, when it's getting worse, when you can't concentrate on the budget figures past the slowly deepening pain. He shakes his head and sends you home, urging a scrip for Tylenol 3 on you, waving off your objections about the amount of paperwork you have piling up. "Take a day or two," he says. "Don't worry about us. We can handle things here."

You stop by the clinic, and Parul says the same, pushes you out. "Take it easy," she says. "You'll be fine. Don't let Martin pull you into a rematch for a few weeks."

You drive away, fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel. You drag yourself to bed and swallow muscle relaxants along with Davidson's Tylenol 3.

You sleep restlessly. In the afternoon, you push yourself up and almost whimper, limping to get yourself a hot water bottle, more pills. You lie in your bed, the hot water bottle draped, searing, over your thigh. Your body tenses, gradually, fighting the pain as it grows, beyond anything you've ever known. You force yourself to relax, to push your frown away, to _breathe_. But you are suffocating; the air is stopped in your chest, your throat is choked with sobs. You clench one hand in the sheets, and the other scrabbles at your leg, squeezing, trying to push away this _thing_ that has _hurt_ you and you don't know _why_. You close your eyes against the tears sliding down your temples, to your hair.

You still don't know that nothing will ever be the same again.

 

\--

 

Parul frowns when you return, haggard from lack of sleep and muzzy on too much codeine, not that it's helped. "Did you _drive_ like this?" Parul asks, even as she's frowning over your leg, where on the surface there seems to be nothing wrong at all. Even her gentle palpation is torture, and you curl around the burning knot in your leg.

"Please," you say, _oh God, please, anything--_ You're holding back a scream, but it piles up behind your clenched teeth and at any moment you won't be able to swallow it down for one more second. _Please, just make it stop--_

Parul says, "I probably shouldn't," but she is reaching for a syringe, for a bottle of Demerol. You let yourself cry, at last, seeing her prepare the injection, knowing that this will ease and you'll be able to breathe, to think.

The drug makes you shaky with relief, fuzzy and dry-mouthed and vague. Parul says, "I'm going to admit you," and her words echo, somewhere far away. You manage to nod, to consent.

Even then, under everything, as you float away, you know that the pain is still there.

 

\--

 

Three days.

Three days since the tennis game, and your entire body is in service to this pain.

There are tests, and the doctors who know you speak in hushed whispers that don't invite you to overhear. There are hearty, empty smiles, and anxious glances at your morphine drip.

You drift. You remember every second and forget every hour. You wake to the sound of crying, and you can hardly believe it's your voice, hoarse now and disappearing. No one knows what's happening to you, and that should be the worst of all; but it twines together with the pain and your nightmares, and with your endless hope that someone will find the answer. That is far worse.

That is all there is.

The antibiotics have done nothing. Your kidneys are shutting down and no one knows why. That's when House sweeps in, out of nowhere. He pushes past Nguyen, the head of Nephrology, and takes one look at your catheter bag, at your leg, and, unlike the rest of them, into your face.

He meets your eyes. Solemn-sad, he calls you _Lisa_.

That is the first time you truly think that you are dying.

 

\--

 

"Get an MRI of her goddamn leg! That's how you get your fucking confirmation!"

The argument rises and falls outside your room, sliding in and out of hearing, of understanding. House's voice cracks loud and then gets low and vicious and detailed, _rising creatine kinase, leaking myoglobin, clotted aneurysm_, while Davidson and Nguyen murmur cautions and rebukes. You know he is right; you think they know it as well; but House tries too hard to be a law unto himself, and Davidson's job consists mostly of reining him in.

The argument fades. You fade.

When you open your eyes, House is standing at the foot of your bed, watching you. "They want to amputate," he says, without preamble.

You nod, the tiniest movement you can manage. You're crying again, silently, and you hate that it's in front of him.

He slams your chart against the footboard with a sudden crash. "They're wrong!" he shouts. "They want to butcher you because they're too afraid to try and save your leg."

"House," you say, watching the tightness in his face. "They have to remove the necrotic tissue..."

"It's not the only option," he yells, as if this is your fault. "They want the easy way out."

After three days, you think, the easy way out sounds like your best option. "Prosthetics have come a long way," you say. Wishing you could sleep. Wishing you didn't have to reassure him as well as yourself.

"They'd have to go a lot farther," House says. You remember this about him, how suddenly tender he can be. "Stop bad-mouthing the most gorgeous legs I've ever fantasized about."

You laugh, and if it comes out ragged and blurred with tears, it's still the best you've felt in days. "What about Stacy's?"

"Don't have to fantasize about hers," he says gruffly. "I can look whenever I want."

"Davidson knows what he's doing," you say, because you can only hope that he does.

"We can restore circulation," House says. "We can put in a bypass--"

"You're the nephrologist," you say, meaning that the potassium alone will kill you, and the cytokines washing back into your system. Organ failure, your kidneys first and then your liver.

"Cuddy," House says. Almost whispers. You open your eyes--when did they close?--and wonder if that's concern in House's eyes, if this is how he shows his fear. "Let me do the bypass. You're strong enough to get through the post-operative pain, you could regain the use of your leg--"

_Liar_, you think, _liar_, this is four days of muscle death and House should be arguing _for_ the amputation. "It's just a leg," you say. You think: wheelchair, never to run again, never to move without thought; you think of pain, of physical therapy, and what you would be willing to give up because there is no alternative.

"I'm right," House says. "This is the right choice."

And, in the end, you trust him. You always have.

"Do it," you say.

And you drift.

 

\--

 

House paces in your room, after the operation. His long legs take him to the door in a step and a half, and then back in two as he circles the bed to adjust the level of morphine.

"'S too much," you protest, although you're so glad of it, so glad.

"You need it," he says sharply. "God, Cuddy. These are the morons who prescribed _bedrest_, for fuck's sake."

It's all they knew. It's all you knew. You don't say so; it hurts even to speak. Your throat is raw, although you can't remember screaming. You can't remember anything, before now.

And you can't last, like this. "There has to be another way," you say.

"I'm not letting them cut off your leg."

"Not your choice," you say, and when he refuses to meet your eyes, you repeat, "House. Not yours."

He stares at you, guilty and defiant. How badly does he have to be right? You gather yourself for this effort, for the only thing that you can hang on to. You want your leg, you do, but you can't imagine wanting it more than your life. And there is another way. "Debridement surgery," you say. "Remove the dead muscle."

"The risk of reperfusion injury--"

Strange, to hear House talk about the danger. Maybe he means it. Maybe he's thinking about consequences, for once in his life. "My risk," you say. You'd still have your leg. You'll probably be in pain for the rest of your life, but words like _forever_ and _always_ are too huge to imagine.

"Or I could put you under, until the pain passes. You'd still have the muscle--"

"Or I'd be dead," you say, and you try desperately not to want that.

"This can't last much longer," House mutters, watching the monitors. "Just hold on."

Agony rises from your leg like a tide, impossible to resist. If there was once a part of yourself you could keep separate from this hurt--your mind, your hope--it's gone now. There's nothing left of _you_, inside the pain. You say, in a cracked whisper, "I can't. House, I can't--"

You can't breathe.

"Fuck," House says, and slams the crash button by the bed. "Get me five mils of calcium gluconate," he roars at the nurse when she comes in.

"She's Dr. Davidson's patient--"

"She's going into white count complex tachycardia! Get me the calcium gluconate!"

"I'm not authorized--"

"Then get the fuck out!" House says, and you

start

to

fall.

 

\--

 

This is what your future looks like.

You choose the wheelchair over the prosthetic, most days, because the chair gives you a certain moral authority. Yelling at underlings sitting down makes them cringe and scurry to obey. You guilt more money out of donors than you ever did before. "This hospital saved my life," you say, dressed to kill and smiling brightly, dangerously. "I'd like to ensure that it can keep on saving lives."

You don't mention the four days when this hospital left you dying.

You take over Davidson's office when he retires and bully the board until every part of the campus is accessible. You create the Department of Diagnostics, and probably even House doesn't know if it's your gratitude to him or your bitterness to the others that gets him the job as department head. You certainly don't.

House doesn't change, and maybe he's the only one who doesn't. He leers down your blouses from his easy, graceful height. He makes Bionic Woman cracks at least once a day. His best argument to get you to authorize his latest stunt is to grab the chair's handles and wheel you into his patient's room, so that you can see just how badly the treatment is necessary, unavoidable, _right_. When you're winning an argument, and he wants the last word, he takes the stairs.

You adjust. You live alone. You're competent; you manage.

You wonder what it would be like, to make love like this, with your leg always (never) between you. After House breaks up with Stacy, you think--

You don't think. You work.

Sometimes, you wake up at night, and your right ankle itches so fiercely that you reach to scratch it before you remember that it's not there.

Sometimes, you start to stand before you remember that you can't.

Sometimes, you just want to run.

 

\--

 

This is what your future looks like.

Every day starts with the pills. You fight it at first, hating the way the dosage creeps upwards as you try to manage breakthroughs, falls, bruises, and the awful days that seem to follow one on another in hopeless sequence. Forty milligrams a day becomes eighty, and when you look up and realize how far you've come, you spend a weekend detoxing and hating yourself.

By Monday, you're using the pills again.

House always writes the scrips you ask for. Some days, when you refuse to ask, he brings you the bottle anyway, slamming it down on your desk. "Take one," he says angrily, in his talking-to-patients voice.

"Are you _trying_ to make my liver fail?" you ask, pushing the bottle away, wanting to do anything but.

He's suddenly serious when he says, "You're more important than your liver."

You hate what the cane does to your body: your stoop-shouldered limp looks ridiculous when you wear skirts, and anything higher than flats is impossible. Crutches are worse, and the idea of a wheelchair when--after all--you still have both legs, seems like giving in.

You're a bitch at work more days than you can count, but you're the boss, and you're good. They probably hate you, but they listen.

Even House, most days. If he feels guilty at all, if he ever tries to apologize, it's by listening to you, respecting you. You give him his freedom and then, when he goes too far, you only have to limp into his office to remind him that he's not always right.

He was the first one to see the scar. You hope he's the last to ever see it again.

More often than not, it's the pain that wakes you in the mornings. You call in sick, as much as three times a month, and you despise the careful reassurance in your assistant's voice when you do.

More often than not, House bangs his way into your place, on those days.

"Get the hell out, House," you say from the couch. You're not moving. You're not good company.

"No," he says, and sits down beside you with a bag of takeout. "Eat."

And he stays until you do.

 

\--

 

This is what your future is.

"I've got v-fib," House says. "Charging."

You want to tell him this isn't necessary. There's no pain, here. You think you might like to stay.

But House would never listen. He stands above your bed, holding the defibrillator paddles. "Clear," he says, and someone far away is shocked, body arching, thump and whine as the paddles charge again.

More voices: "House. Stop it. It's over."

"I'm running this code," House says, snarling, shoving. "Get the hell out," _you failures_, you hear, _you morons_.

Thump-whine.

Again.

Again.

Flatline, you think. House, let me go.

Again.

You drift.

 

\--

 

House is watching you when you open your eyes. The stubble starting on his chin ages him by years, and his eyes are bloodshot. You wonder if he's been home, if Stacy knows where he is. You wonder how long, but time slides away from you, and the pain undercuts everything, washes away your support until you can't possibly care.

"Knew you were too stubborn to let dying stop you," he says, and his voice is harsh.

"Do the surgery," you order, although you couldn't say which surgery you mean--the debridement, or the amputation.

"No. You'll be fine. We've got you on--"

His words rattle out, sharp-precise, and by the time they reach you they mean nothing. You shake your head, so tired, so fucking tired of this. "I'm dying." Have already died. "It's not going to work."

"I'm right," he says.

_You're killing me to prove it_, you think, but saying it is too hard, finding the words and pushing them out. "No," you say. House stares at you, jaw tight, eyes bright and intent and feverish. "I want the surgery."

"I can put you in a chemical coma," he says. "To get you through the pain."

_No_, you think, and _please_, but they aren't words he'll hear. "House," you say. "Promise me."

"I'm going to save you," he says.

You close your eyes. You're too tired to fight.

You nod.

 

\--

 

You do trust him, after all.

House prepares the drugs that will put you under, and injects them into your IV line. "In a minute," he says, watching your eyes, so carefully controlled, so blank. He doesn't reassure you, but you hold his gaze and maybe there is a promise in his eyes.

_Promise me_, you think, because you _do_ trust him; except you trust him to be himself: to betray you if he must, if the medicine demands it. You don't know if you can forgive that. You only know that it's true.

You're starting to sink, now. You're falling away from the world.

Maybe House will demand the amputation if your condition worsens. Maybe he'll give in and order the debridement surgery if he thinks you won't wake up.

Maybe he will let you die before he'll believe he wasn't right.

_I'll save you_, he said.

Promise me, you answered.

_I'm right._

Maybe he is.


End file.
